Digital multimedia data such as video and music can be transmitted wirelessly to mobile receivers, such as wireless telephones, for playing of the multimedia by users of the mobile receivers. Such multimedia data may be broadcast by wireless telecommunications systems to mobile stations such as wireless telephones.
Multimedia, which consumes a relatively large amount of bandwidth, may share the wireless spectrum with voice and data calls. This limits the number of users who can be serviced simultaneously. Moreover, because voice calls have priority, during periods of high usage multimedia service may be interrupted, however temporarily, affecting the quality of service provided.
This problem stems in part from the lack of control current wireless service providers have in the generation of multimedia streams. Multimedia streams may be from, e.g., the Internet or other source without any knowledge of the data type being transferred and no control over the characteristics of the multimedia stream being sent. This means that the service provider has no control over the bandwidth requirements of the multimedia stream being requested by and transmitted to a user. For instance, a stream is transmitted in whatever encoded form in which it might have originated, regardless of the preferences or capabilities of the users who are to receive that particular stream and regardless of the current bandwidth situation of the wireless provider. Consequently, a stream might be encoded at too low a compression ratio (i.e., require too much bandwidth) and thus be relatively voluminous, compared to a stream encoded at a higher compression ratio, thereby rendering a higher quality of service than a user might prefer or be able to use, regardless of the bandwidth available to the service provider. As recognized herein, the service provider might have to interrupt such a stream during periods of high usage, whereas the same stream encoded at a higher rate (i.e. using a higher compression ratio, or reduced resolution or reduced picture quality) might not have to be interrupted. Limitations such as mobile device display resolution, color depth, update rate, RAM, CPU speed as well as bandwidth allocation, user preferences, etc. could be used by a service provider to better manager the bandwidth available for all users and thus provide better quality service to a greater number of potential customers. Unfortunately, because the service provider has no control over encoding, such flexibility currently is not possible.